In this course students will be given the opportunity to improve their oral language skills by participating in in-class debates on a wide variety of controversial issues. In so doing, students will be able to develop their public speaking skills as well as hone their powers of persuasion by arguing for or against motions which they may not necessarily support or have strong views about themselves. Students will be expected to take an active part in all debates, either as speakers in at least two debates or as members of the audience in the open discussions towards the end of each debate.

In addition, we will continue our review of problem areas in English which frequently cause difficulty to German learners and therefore lead to mistakes. As in Basic Communication Skills II, students will be expected to identify, correct and explain typical errors that Germans still make at university level in the area of grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling.